Aurum
（
χρυσός). Gold, from its malleability and the circumstance
that it is found lying in lumps, was one of the earliest of metals used by man, and among the
most primitive resources of civilization. This was suspected by the ancients, who make the
earliest age of the world's history an age of gold. In the Heroic Age we find that gold was
put to a great variety of uses. Homer speaks of the houses of Menelaüs and
Alcinoüs as full of silver and gold; the armour of Glaucus was of gold (
Il. vi. 236), so were the handmaids of Hephaestus (
Il. xviii. 417), and the doves on Nestor 's cup (
Il. xi. 632). So in the decoration of the shield of Achilles, the chest
of Cypselus, and other works of art, much gold was employed. And that this plenty of gold was
not a mere figment of the poet we know from the best testimony, that of graves. At Mycenae,
which is in Homer called
πολύχρυσος, Dr. Schliemann has dug
up a prodigious quantity of gold,—cups, and jugs, and masks, and ornaments of all
sorts. The graves of the Crimea (though these are of later date) also yield abundance of gold,
the corpses which are discovered in them being covered from head to foot with gold, beaten
into the shape of animals, rosettes, and designs of all kinds. In the use of gold the wealthy
Ionians of Asia Minor copied their neighbours, even binding their hair with it, in which
custom the Athenians are said to have followed them (
Thuc.i. 6).
See
Caelatura.
There can be no question that to the smiths of early time gold must have been the metal
which gave most scope for the artistic faculty. Its extreme softness and malleability enabled
even workmen who had no more elaborate tools than a hammer and nails to work it into any given
shape. All the vessels of Mycenae are thus hammered out and joined into shape by nails, and
the earliest statues of the gods were produced by the same method, which was called by the
ancients
σφυρηλατεῖν. They did indeed sometimes, instead of
welding two surfaces of gold together, unite them by a solder of borax (Schliemann's
Mycenae. p. 231), but practically this process was unusual. Casting in hollow
moulds belongs to a later period.
In the preparation of gold the ancients used only the simplest processes of melting and
refining. When gold occurred mixed with silver they frequently did not separate the silver,
but treated the mixed as a simple metal.
Asia was the source of gold, from the days when the Argonauts sailed to Colchis in search of
the golden fleece, to the days when Alexander and his captains seized and dispersed the
enormous hoards laid up during many generations by the Babylonian kings and their Persian
successors. Arrian and Diodorus give us accounts which might well seem fabulous of the
quantities of gold seized in the great cities of Asia. According to Diodorus (xvii. 71),
in the city of Persepolis alone Alexander captured a treasure in gold and silver of 120,000
talents. The wealth in gold of Croesus is testified by his gift to Delphi (
Herod.i. 50) of above 100 solid bricks of the metal. A private individual, Pythius,
in the reign of Xerxes, possessed three millions of gold darics (
Herod.vii. 27). The sources whence the gold of Asia was drawn were
various—India was one of the chief. In Arabia, also, abundant gold was found and
freely exported (Strabo, xvi. 3, 4). Lydia supplied great quantities of river-gold, both pure
and mixed with silver. (See
Electrum.) But the
richest source of all, in the opinion of the ancients, was the country of the
Arimaspi (q.v.), where the gold was guarded by
griffins, and with difficulty won from them by the hardy natives. Most modern writers suppose
that the reality which gave rise to this fable was the gold mines of the Caucasus, whence gold
penetrated through the country of the Scythians to Persia. A similar story was told or
invented in regard to the Indian gold (
Herod.iii.
102）—namely, that it was found in a country infested by huge ants (
μύρμηκες), from whose pursuit men could only escape when riding on
swift camels. The motive of these stories for deterring adventurers is very manifest.
The gold mines of Europe were also important. The Carthaginians, and after them the Romans,
obtained their main supply from Spain, in the rivers of which country was a rich deposit of
gold, notably in the Tagus. Both in Gaul and in Spain, at the time of the Roman conquests,
whole districts were covered with rich auriferous deposits, yielding nuggets to the
inhabitants on the application of the simplest systems of washing. In the provinces of Asturia
and Lusitania, according to Pliny (
Pliny H. N.
xxxiii. 78), the workmen went through the laborious process of undermining whole hills
by their excavations, and then turning on rivers to wash the fallen earth and separate the
particles of metal. Gold was also found in the Italian Padus, in the Hebrus in Thrace, and
other rivers. Polybius states (xxxiv. 10) that in his time great quantities of gold were found
on the surface of the ground in Pannonia. In Greece proper, gold was found in small quantities
in the islands of Siphnos and Thasos, and in larger quantities in the mountains of Thrace.
These last, however, seem not to have yielded their full supply until they fell into the hands
of Philip of Macedon, who procured from them, it is said, 1000 talents a year (
Diod. xvi. 8).
Diodorus also informs us (
iii. 12) that in Upper Egypt, on the
confines of Aethiopia, were gold mines which were worked, from the time of the early kings of
Egypt onwards, for the benefit of the state. But here the gold was not found as elsewhere, on
the surface of the ground, but extracted from the heart of the mountains by a number of
miserable slaves. Diodorus describes the process, which appears to be that of extracting gold
from quartz. The stone, he says, which contained the metal was softened by fire, and then
detached in masses by wedges of iron. These masses were brayed in stone mortars and ground to
the fineness of sand. Finally, the gold was detached by washing, the workmen aiding the
process with their hands and with fine sponges. The metal was purified by being placed,
together with a certain quantity of lead, salt, tin, and bran, in jars hermetically sealed,
and exposed for five days to the heat of a fire, after which time the
foreign substances were found to have evaporated.
In his thirty-third book the elder Pliny traces the history of the use of gold in Rome from
earliest times. He says (chap. v.) that when the Gauls sacked the city no more than 1000
pounds' weight of gold could be found in it for ransom. The stock of gold in the treasury had
increased seven years before the Third Punic War to 17,410 pounds; and after the successful
termination of that war the metal came into commoner use for decoration, as for covering
ceilings and walls, as well as for vessels. The custom of wearing gold rings was so late in
Rome that even Marius wore one of iron. (See
Anulus.)
The great influx of the metal and its use for all purposes of luxury dated in Rome as in
Greece from the time of Oriental conquest. For ancient testimonies as to gold mines, see
Sabatier,
Production de l'Or, de l'Argent, et du Cuivre chez les Anciens; and
for the use of gold in coinage, see
Numismatics.
